by Bryn Donovan
He said, “Irene Pennington Girard, we know you were the victim of murder in this house. You were young and beautiful and you deserved a long life. He paused. “You see her anywhere?”
Andi shook her head. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right. It’s more normal not to get a visual.” Morty went on to say, “Your family was lied to when they deserved the truth.”
She sniffed. “Wait. Do you smell something?”
“What?” David sounded alarmed.
Morty inhaled. “Lily of the Valley,” he said.
David looked to Andi.
“Yeah,” she confirmed.
“Well, that’s better than what I was expecting,” David said. It dawned on Andi that he’d been imagining something horrible, perhaps the smell of decaying flesh. “How do you know it’s Lily of the Valley?”
“I know my plants,” Morty replied.
“Her perfume,” Andi said. She added more loudly, “Irene, we’re glad you’re here.”
Morty eyes widened. “Um, no.”
“What?”
“What my friend Miss Petrowski means,” he said to the ghost, “is that we’re glad you can hear us, and we hope that means you’ll move on to the other side.”
Andi realized what she’d done wrong. You didn’t say to a spirit, We’re glad you’re here. You said, Wouldn’t you be happier if you left?
The psychic said, “The truth is known, your body has been given a proper burial and there’s nothing else here for you. There’s a better place waiting for you.” He blew out the candle.
Andi frowned, concentrating. “Is the smell gone? I think so.”
Morty shrugged. “All I can smell now is burned-out candle. But it probably worked. Anyway, she wasn’t much trouble, was she?”
“So…we’re done?” David asked.
“Think so.”
David and Andi looked at each other. “You were really impressive,” he said.
“Thanks.” She beamed, feeling tired but pleased with herself. “I can’t believe it’s over.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, now it’s just a normal house you can sell, and you’ll never have to worry about it again.”
He gave her a brief hug, warm and reassuring. “I don’t have to stay away from you anymore,” he said.
“I know,” Andi breathed. “We can do whatever we want.”
“Tell you what,” Morty said. “I’m just going to do one more quick sweep of the house, just to make sure we’re good, and then we can go. You don’t need to go with me, Andi. I don’t think there’s anything to see.”
“Hey, yeah,” David said. “So how come she can sometimes see them and you can’t?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s stronger than me on the visuals, in general.”
The blunt and flattering assessment of her ability flustered Andi.
“And some days we’re just sharper than others,” he went on to explain. “Some spirits make a personal connection with us. And some of them manifest when they feel strongly about something.”
“So it’s an inexact science,” Andi supplied.
“That’s right, babe. Except for the ‘science’ part.”
“I still don’t understand one other thing,” David said. “If the man in the black suit is basically this nice guy who got killed by his friend, why did he go berserk and attack Mr. Willingham?”
“Hell if I know. Your Mr. Willingham might have looked like his brother? The chainsaw reminded him of the axe he got killed with? These spirits, they’re not usually rational. It’s like they’re stuck inside a nightmare.”
Then the lights went dim.
Chapter Twenty-One
David heard Andi gasp. The three of them froze where they stood in a tight circle.
Then Andi dug her flashlight back out of her purse and clicked it on. David opened his mouth to ask Morty, as politely as he could, what the hell was going on, when a small scritchy sound came from overhead.
He looked up at the extinguished chandelier.
Something hurled down at them. David covered Andi’s face and head with a protective arm. The chandelier bulb smashed at their feet into dark glittering shards like sinister confetti.
“Ah, shit,” Morty said wearily.
Andi trembled like someone freezing to death.
Another scraping noise. David watched the next bulb in the chandelier turn and rise from its socket. He wrapped his arms around Andi and backed her away from the chandelier, closer to the door, even as Morty said, “Get her out of here.”
The psychic moved closer to the light fixture. What was he doing?
Morty raised his right hand and chanted loudly in Latin. A splintering crack came from the stairs.
David stared, rooted in alarm and fascination, as a post of the banister railing broke free and flung itself at Morty.
The psychic dodged it, then roared, “Take her and get out!”
David hustled Andi out the front door, keeping him in front of her. The cold November air hit them. He stripped off his leather bomber jacket and put it on Andi to stop her from shivering. Even in the darkness, he could see her face was blank, expressionless. He had to put her arms in the sleeves, as though dressing a child. The jacket covered her to mid-thigh. “Andi,” he said, leaning forward, looking into her glazed eyes as he zipped it up.
A huge crash came from inside. They both jumped.
What the hell was going on?
He couldn’t leave Morty in there alone. “Andi, just stay out here for a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.”
Still looking dazed, she bit her lip and nodded. David rushed back in.
Morty lay face down, motionless. One side of the huge fallen chandelier rested on the back of his skull. Blood shone on the floorboards.
No. This couldn’t be happening.
David raced to the man’s body, picked up the heavy chandelier and hurled it halfway across the room. Kneeling down, he put one hand to the wound on Morty’s head.
Morty flinched.
“Oh, thank God,” David breathed, rolling him over.
Morty’s eyes were squeezed shut, but he grunted, clearly conscious. David put his hand over the cut, applying pressure to slow the bleeding.
The front door creaked. David reared up at the possible threat.
Andi stepped back in. She gasped when she saw David crouched over Morty’s sprawled body.
“I said, stay outside!” David barked at her.
She looked down at the psychic then to him again. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! I came back in and he’d been brained by a chandelier!”
Morty stirred to sit up, and David helped him. “Morty, Jesus Christ, you scared the crap out of me.”
“I scared you.”
David said, “Let’s take you to the ER.”
“No!” Morty grabbed his arm and David helped him scramble to his feet. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
“What?” David looked at his head again. “You’re bleeding like crazy.”
“It’s not that bad. I know about these things.” Swaying slightly where he stood, Morty didn’t convince David. “I can take care of it. Just bring my suitcase.” He lurched toward the door.
“Why the hell can’t I get people to go to the damn hospital?”
Andi went to the mantel and picked up his suitcase, and they followed Morty out the door.
Morty made it to his car and sat down in the passenger seat. He took the suitcase from Andi, flipped it open and drew out a first aid kit. Inside it, he found some gauze and cut a long length.
“You always carry a first aid kit?” David asked.
“Comes in handy now and again.” He pressed a thick cotton pad to the wound.
“Do you need help?” Andi asked.
“Actually, no.” With impressive nonchalance and expertise, Morty wound the gauze tightly around his head. “That should hold me ’til I get home.”
Blood stained h
alf of Morty’s shirt. David knew even minor head wounds bled like hell, but rage rose up in him. “You have no right!” he roared back at the front door.
“Mr. Girard, shut up,” Morty said reasonably. “Let’s get out of here now.”
“All right, all right.” He turned to Andi, but she’d stepped a few paces away from the car, back toward the house. “Andi, are you coming?”
She stood frozen, like before. But no…this was worse. She stared at one of the front windows of the house, and her eyes radiated pure fear. Her mouth opened in the shape of a scream but no sound came out.
“Andi!” David shouted. She couldn’t hear him. He whirled back to Morty. “What’s wrong with her!”
The psychic looked grim. “I’m not sure.”
David drew closer to her. Andi shrank from him as if he were a serial killer brandishing an axe over his head. “No,” she cried out in a strangled voice. “Please don’t…”
“Andi!” He took her by the shoulders.
She shrieked, a mind-piercing cry, and wildly fought him off. The back of her fist connected, more by chance than anything else, with David’s jaw. “Get away!”
He struggled to get hold of her, to grab her arms again.
“Andi! Sweetheart, it’s me!” Gently, he raised one hand to her cheek. “Please, it’s okay. It’s just me…”
Recognition dawned in her blue eyes. “David?”
He felt blessed relief. “Yeah. You with me now?”
“Oh my God.” She wrapped her arms around him.
“What happened?”
She just shook her head against his chest.
David held her more tightly, feeling completely lost. “Morty, what happened to her?”
Morty shook his head. “Let’s get out of here now. Go to my place.”
David said, “Andi, it’s all right. We’re going to leave, okay?”
She lifted her head and nodded.
Morty tossed his keys to David. “You’re driving, Slappy.”
* * *
When they got to Morty’s apartment he said dryly, “You kids make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back. Hey, make some coffee if you want some.”
“I do want some,” David said as the psychic retreated to the other room. “Do you?”
Andi nodded. “I guess. I really am exhausted.” She cleared a couple of books off of the couch next to her and lay her head down on a dusty-looking velvet pillow. “I’m just going to rest for a minute, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t.” David didn’t know exactly what she’d just been through, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if she were in some kind of mild shock.
Looking down where she lay, he noticed how a long strand of her golden-brown hair had fallen across her face. He reached over and brushed it aside. She gave him a wistful look.
David went into the man’s kitchen and found the coffeemaker and a can of cheap coffee. He got a pot started then looked in the cabinets and found three mugs. One said “Ethics in Epistemology Conference, University of Chicago.” Another was from a Hard Rock Café in Honolulu, and the third had a picture of a fairy.
When he returned to the living room, Andi’s eyes were closed. He didn’t want to wake her. Morty hadn’t come back yet, and David ventured into the tiny hallway. A light came from the bathroom door. “Morty, you’re not passed out in there, are you?” David called, rapping on the door, which swung open.
Morty leaned over the bathroom sink, both of his hands up near his head wound, wincing. He was stitching up the wound himself.
“Holy shit,” David said. “What are you doing?”
“You can see what I’m doing.” Morty tied a knot and pulled it tight. “Give me the scissors.”
David followed his gaze to where the scissors sat on top of the toilet tank, next to an almost-empty bottle of whiskey. After handing the scissors over, he watched as Morty snipped off the thread.
With a wet towel the psychic soaked up the last of the blood and tossed the towel in the bathtub. “There,” he said to David. “Good as new.”
“You knew it was bad enough for stitches,” David guessed. “Why wouldn’t you go to the ER?”
“That’ll be a fascinating thing to talk about some other time. How is she?”
“Asleep.”
“I’m not asleep,” Andi’s voice said behind them. “I just laid down for a minute. Is that coffee ready?”
Once they were settled, David asked Morty, “Okay. So what the hell happened back there? I thought Clarence was gone. Andi saw him leave. But he came back?”
“It wasn’t Clarence,” Andi corrected him. “It was the other one.”
David shook his head, uncomprehending.
“It’s like I told you,” she said with a half-laugh that didn’t have much humor in it. “There were two different men in black suits.”
“This is the one who hurt Mr. Willingham,” David said.
“The one who killed Clarence,” Morty added. “The owner of the house.”
“I’m the owner of the house.”
“Yeah, well, he designed it. He killed for it.”
“Edgar,” Andi said.
“How do you know this?” David asked Morty, who shrugged.
“He told me.”
“You saw him?”
“No,” the psychic said. “Heard him. Talking in my mind.”
David groaned. This was so insane.
“Well, I saw him,” Andi said. “Again.”
Morty studied her. “Tell us about it, babe.”
David hated this. He wanted to put her to bed and have her not remember a thing in the morning. But he knew that wasn’t an option.
“He…I don’t know. He was staring at me. He has a kind of big, squashy nose, and this awful grin. I saw him in the wood before.”
“What?” David responded at the same time Morty asked, “He was in the woods?”
“No, in the wood,” she repeated. “I saw his face…in the wood grain. The very first day I was here. And then it was gone again.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” David asked.
“Because I was trying to get you to hire me!” she protested. “Hey, I’m the one for the job, and by the way, I see scary faces in wood.”
Morty hunched his shoulders. “What do we know about this guy?”
“He was an architect,” David said. “He designed the place for his friend, who was in New York for several months on business. And as far as anyone knew, his friend never came home, but of course we know better.” He rubbed his forehead. “We have some of his notes…he thought the house was his masterpiece. He was crazy about it.”
“It’s his eyes,” Andi said. “That’s what scared me so much.”
They both turned back to her.
“What do you mean?” Morty asked.
“I couldn’t even put it into words before. They’re like pits. You can see other people in there.”
David felt something like motion sickness. “What do you mean?”
“Like…the man who killed Irene. And your father! I mean, not your father…it’s like he sucked them up. He wants to suck you up, too. He can do it.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’m sorry, that came out crazy. I don’t know how to explain it. And when he’s there, it just feels like there’s nothing but evil.”
“Yeah,” Morty said. “We’ve got a demon.”
David said, “What?”
“Here’s what I think we’re dealing with,” the psychic explained. “Our architect is basically possessing the house itself. I mean, Andi’s seeing him right in the wood, you know? And every time he drives someone else to do evil, he gets stronger. Look, here’s what he told me. That house belongs to the Girards, and if I try to get in his way, I can go to Hell sooner rather than later.”
“What?” Andi turned to him. “Okay, there’s no way you’re going to Hell.”
“Not really my call,” Morty said. “Anyway, that’s not the point. Our archi
tect thinks this house belongs to him and his family only. He doesn’t want anyone trying to sell it.”
David cursed. “Like Irene.”
“And your gardener friend was helping to get the place sold. So was Miss Petrowski here.”
“Yeah, well, so was Carlos, and nobody attacked him.”
Andi tilted her head. “Well, if Carlos hurt me and he got arrested or something, that would have gotten rid of us both at one time.”
“Jesus.” David hit the arm of the sofa. “Is this why Gordon Girard bought the house back? I could never figure out why he did that. This demon architect…influenced him or something?” He wondered whether this explained all of Gordon’s violence, and whether Gordon had been abused by his father, too. It unsettled him.
“I would say yeah,” Morty confirmed. “It’s all part of that evil Girard vortex. No offense, Slappy.”
“None taken. I’m not a Girard.” It gave him pleasure to say this.
“Come again?”
“Mr. Willingham, the gardener. He and my mom had an affair.”
Morty’s mouth quirked up. “I’ll be damned. Good on you, Katherine.”
“Yeah. So there’s less of a chance of me being…what did you say? Possessed?”
“I don’t know.” Morty made a steeple of his fingers. “It seems hopeful. On the other hand, you are still a Girard, and you are the owner of the house.”
“How do we get rid of this thing, then?” he demanded. “Why couldn’t you do it before?”
“That’s not the job I thought I was doing. A regular banishment wouldn’t work on him. He was making fun of it. Why do you think he hit me with the chandelier?”
Andi scrunched up her face. “What?”
“The banishment has the element where you extinguish the candles,” he explained. “The demon thought it would be funny to extinguish the chandelier. Get it?”
“Oh.”
“And then use it to put my lights out. His way of saying he’s a hell of a lot stronger than me.”
“Is he?” David asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it, pal? I wouldn’t rule it out. Basically, as far as the job goes, we’re talking full-on exorcism here. Except instead of exorcising a person, we’re exorcising a whole house.”
“How soon can we do it? I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
